Exploring my life through the lens of a camera…

Posts Tagged ‘Rant’

The last thing anyone wants to do is spend hours in an airport. It’s even worse when you’re exhausted at the end of a trip, had insomnia a few nights on the trip and had to do the milk run to get home. I had stupid delays on the way there too, but on the way home it was worse. I ended up in the Edmonton Airport for 6.5 hours in the middle of the night.

The first annoyance is that there’s no hotel attached to the airport — the closest ‘airport’ hotel is a shuttle ride away, and for such a short time it’s not worth it. I was considering seeing if there was a cheap rate if a hotel was attached to the airport, but not if I have to shuttle there, that effectively reduces the time I can spend crashed out.

The second annoyance? That they charge for WiFi. Vancouver and Denver both give the travelers free WiFi. I refuse to pay roughly $10 for a few hours. They have no options for, say, 1 or 2 hours of WiFi. At least with shorter options we’d get a price break and wouldn’t pay for 24 hours of access when we only need a short amount connectivity. Needless to say I didn’t spend the money.

Anyhow, I planned to go through to the gate and sleep on the row of chairs until morning, but apparently the gate area closes for a few hours and they wouldn’t let me stay there. This seems a little dumb to me, since I already had no choice but to stay at the airport. They sent me up to this ‘observation lounge’ where I tried to crash for a few hours. That was only semi-effective. I did nap, but not well. I had no blanket, and don’t really need it to nap well, but it got so cold up there that I kept waking up. So, now, I’m still exhausted.

Then I get to the security. I don’t understand the inconsistency of the screening. Are they just bored? Do I look scary or like a risk? I’ve been through screening with the same bag of liquids in multiple airports over the last few days and EVERY airport was fine with it — in fact, most didn’t have the ‘labelled’ bags easily available. This one? They made me leave the screening area, transfer the liquids to one of their bags and only one. I understand if that is the regulation, but really? If it is the regulation, why the hell aren’t the other airports: Vancouver, Austin, Denver all applying it too?

I’ve been through this airport many a time and every time it sucks. I hate this airport. And, I hate Aeroplan for booking this stupid stupid schedule for me. I like the travel points but I really hate this flight schedule. Every time I fly on points I end up with a stupid set of flights. I think, as soon as I can, I will switch to a different travel points card — one with more flexibility. I’m sure there must be a website out there that compares the points offered and redeemed between systems. There has to be a better deal out there than this.

Oh and one more airport question?!?! Why the hell are there birds inside? (I tried getting a photo but people walked past and scared them before I could)

I understand why you cycle. I’d be riding my bike everywhere too, if I had a decent one and/or if the tires were not completely flat. With the traffic as insane in Vancouver as it is these days, I hate driving and walk or run everywhere when I’m staying in the city. With the gas prices being what they are I understand why you are cycling.

I know what it’s like to commute by bicycle. I used to cycle to UBC and know what it’s like to have busses or cars whipping past you and almost knocking you over. That’s why I generally stayed to the bike routes — as much as possible.

But, I have something to say: STAY OFF THE BLOODY SIDEWALKS when it’s not the designated place to ride. Twice in the space of 3 minutes I came close to getting creamed by bikes as they flew down the sidewalks. One woman was quite wobbley and was obviously inexperienced. I could almost understand her riding on the sidewalk, except that it was a quiet side street where no cars were travelling.

The second was a guy, obviously an experienced cyclist. He came flying past me a few minutes later and almost knocked me over. What’s worse, the street was closed to traffic due to construction. And since the guy was riding a mountain bike there is no reason why he couldn’t handle an imperfectly paved road. Just GET OFF the sidewalk.